D3D11 Compiling shaders file not found - directx-11

Question

I am trying to use
wchar_t wFilename[MAX_PATH];
mbstowcs(wFilename, szFileNAme, MAX_PATH);
D3DCompileFromFile(wFilename, NULL, D3D_COMPILE_STANDARD_FILE_INCLUDE, szEntryPoint, szShaderModel, dwShaderFlags, 0, ppBlobOut, &pErrorBlob);
to compile my shaders for DirectX 11 and I keep getting a file not found error on the shader file. It is in the same directory as the file that is making the above call.
What could I be missing?
Edit: I've tried adding the shader file to my project which required another shader file which I added as well. Doing this causes an error: 'main':entrypoint not found for file "FXC"

Answer 1

Is that your entire code? As is, you aren't checking the return value of mbstowcs. It could be invalid due to an error and the destination array could be ill-formed. Hence, the "file not found" error.
If you are compiling the shader in-code then you need to tell Visual Studio to not compile the shader as part of the build process. You can do this by excluding it via right-clicking on the file in the solution explorer then Properties > General > Exclude from build: Yes
You are getting the error because the main entry point of your function is not named main and that's the default that FXC looks for. You can change it in the same properties pane as before: Properties > HLSL Compiler > General > Entrypoint name.
But, since you are compiling in-code with custom entry points, you should disable build-step compiling, so changing the entrypoint name will have no effect.

Answer 2

First you have to make sure that visual studio is copying the file into the build directory (that the executable is being executed from).
The DXSample.h header uses this code to find the executables directory path at runtime
inline void GetAssetsPath(_Out_writes_(pathSize) WCHAR* path, UINT pathSize)
{
if (path == nullptr)
{
throw std::exception();
}
DWORD size = GetModuleFileName(nullptr, path, pathSize);
if (size == 0 || size == pathSize)
{
// Method failed or path was truncated.
throw std::exception();
}
WCHAR* lastSlash = wcsrchr(path, L'\\');
if (lastSlash)
{
*(lastSlash + 1) = L'\0';
}
}
Here are some fragments of it being use
std::wstring m_assetsPath;
WCHAR assetsPath[512];
GetAssetsPath(assetsPath, _countof(assetsPath));
m_assetsPath = assetsPath;
std::wstring DeviceResources::GetAssetFullPath(LPCWSTR assetName)
{
return m_assetsPath + assetName;
}
deviceResources.GetAssetFullPath(L"compute_shader.cso").c_str(),
'main':entrypoint not found for file "FXC"
You probably have not specified what kind of shader it is in visual studio properly.